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the first thing I did after seeing this notebook at Pax was fire an email over

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to Gigabyte asking for them to send me one it is no great secret how much I

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love the Razer Blade 14 and small powerful gaming machines in general and

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I was floored by how much Hardware Gigabyte packed into the new aorus X3

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but after my experience with the bricks gaming and its impressive looking specs

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that were spoiled by thermal throttling I told myself not to get too excited

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until I'd actually seen it perform so here we go welcome to my

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review of the a X3 from

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Gigabyte Corsair gaming RGB keyboards feature Precision cherrymx RGB key

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switches for 16.8 million color per key

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backlighting for virtually unlimited customization click now to learn more

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the first hint that this device has some serious horsepower under the hood is the

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included massive 180 W power brick I

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wish they'd include something a little bit more elegant like what Razer does

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but while you will have to carry it it's not the thing you'll actually be

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spending your time interacting with so let's move on to the good stuff the

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exterior of the X3 is as beautiful as the first notebook Gigabyte released

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under the aorus brand the X7 on the top

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cover we find their bird of prey logo on an otherwise just plain sexy matte black

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anodized aluminum finish then on the bottom we find two as expected somewhat

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tiny stereo speakers that for as empty as they sound at least go reasonably

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loud without Distortion rubber feet to keep the device in place lots of vents

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to hopefully keep things cool and torque

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screws that can be opened up to reveal the actually stunningly upgradable

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interior for a gaming rig that while not as thin as the Razer Blade 14 is

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actually lighter at only 1.8 kg to

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complement the core i7 4710hq quad core you get 8 gigs of DDR3 with two slots

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total for a maximum of 16 gigs of RAM you get a GTX 870m with an Overkill 6

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gigs of GDDR 5V RAM and two m.2 slots

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each supporting up to 512 gig ssds and

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capable of being configured in raid Gigabyte keeps this up and they may just

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make the X3 my next laptop back to the outside we'll start at the left where we

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find a Kensington lock a mini DisplayPort port with support for 4K HDMI a

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usb2 port headphone and microphone jacks and an air intake on the front are

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indicator LEDs for Bluetooth wireless drive activity low battery and power and

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then on the right there's more ventilation and SD card reader two USB 3

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ports and the power button finally moving around to the back we are greeted

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by power in two very large cooling vents

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jam-packed full of heat sink fins to leverage as much of the total thickness

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of the notebook as possible and what's this A Hardline landport now we're

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talking I mean sure it's a killer landport rather than an Intel based one

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but damn it it's an RJ45 connector so I'm going to give big kudos to Gigabyte

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for including this when the x3's thin and light competitors rely solely on

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Wireless in fact I think the io on this notebook is the best balanced I've ever

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seen from a gamer's perspective I mean how many gamers use four four pole

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single Jack headsets razor Gigabyte includes dedicated headphone and mic

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Jacks also why do all Ultra books

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considers SD card slots optional this is super handy and then finally I

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personally like having a single usb2 port these days they offer better

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compatibility especially outside of the OS and it's not like devices like mice

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are going to be bottlenecked by USB 2 anyway so gold star Gigabyte for the io

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now let's crack this baby open there's that screen I can't believe

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I made it this far and failed to mention the 13.9 in display on this notebook is

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a 3K one yeah 3200 by 18800 60 HZ matte

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finish exop panel boom it delivers

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stunning contrast acceptable enough backlight bleed that Gigabyte had the

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coonies to ship the notebook with a black desktop background by default and

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viewing angles that are strongly reminiscent of the Razer Blade 14 so not

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as good as IPS but a heck of a lot better than TN and with very good motion

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blur characteristics to boot one thing that's missing though and it's the first

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thing to really give me pause about this notebook so far is touch some people

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won't care and good for them but this is lonus Tech tips and you can tell me how

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touch is stupid when you've got your own YouTube channel with Blackjack and

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hookers I've gotten used to touch and particularly on Windows 8 going back to

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not having it is quite an adjustment for me I also didn't find the robustness of

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the hinge mechanism particularly a inspiring but this has become a common

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complaint of late with screens getting so thin and on that somewhat complaining

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note let's head into the mixed bag that is the keyboard and touchpad the

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keyboard's white backlight is strong or less strong or off if you prefer and the

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layout is mostly pretty good with long

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shifts Backspaces Etc five programmable G keys with five cyclable profiles and

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support for text input Mouse input and macros and only the gimpy for no

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apparent reason arrow keys for me to really complain about but typing on it

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didn't feel good in spite of the pretty nice slightly slick feel to the top of

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the key caps the keys have a fairly decent travel distance but they're just

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kind of mushy without satisfying tactile feedback and they didn't sound good you

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know like they sound kind of rattly

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which leads us to the trackpad not rattly great build quality tracks like a

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dream as long as my hands are dry and

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oil free completely if either of those two conditions are not met the glossy

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surface turns into a smear greasy mess very quickly I would have preferred if

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Gigabyte had gone with a frosted glass rather than a glossy one but lonus you

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might say I won't spend all my time typing on this thing and I'm going to

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plug in a mouse or a control to play my games anyway so how well does it play

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games great question and the answer is

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very well at 1080P or usually 1 1600 by

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900 for an even divider I didn't have the display scaling issues that I

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observed on the Lenovo y50 and I was able to crank up details far more than I

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expected so with that resolution out of

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the way and doing a great job I decided for the lws to take some Modern games

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and dial them into what I felt were playable settings at the native

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resolution of 3200x 18800 and was amazed

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to discover that apart from not thermal throttling I maxed out around 85° on the

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GPU and a little over 90 on the CPU and Tomb Raider I was able to achieve 45 to

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55 is FPS across the board without

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cranking everything down to low and while maintaining reasonable

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temperatures on the outside of the laptop itself too of particular note is

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that Gigabyte avoided putting heat generating components directly under the

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gaming Zone on the keyboard so sweaty Palm syndrome was a nonissue with this

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notebook it should be noted however that it did this by cranking up the fans

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fairly aggressively this is not a quiet gaming notebook and it has a

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fairly high-pitched whine to the fan noise my last comment on gaming per

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performance is regarding battery life as we've come to expect even with battery

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boost frame tank as soon as you pull the plug but the X3 at least managed a

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fairly acceptable battery life and my sort of stare at the fire in crisis one

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test so while it's not revolutionary it at least holds its own against other

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similar sized notebooks although I'd like to see someone cram this kind of

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power into a smaller area within a larger notebook strap a huge battery to

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it and see what we end up with there all

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right so up until now I've focused really only on gaming but what about

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daily use well that's where things get a little bit hairy again I have very mixed

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feelings about 4K even on desktop siiz displays due to poor scaling in Windows

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that causes me to have to choose between either impossibly small UI elements or

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blurry text and applications that don't scale properly and this is still very

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much a problem the reality is though that unless 3K and 4K Hardware starts

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showing up these issues won't get addressed so I'm glad someone is taking

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the first step and I'm sure folks who invest in an X3 will be patting

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themselves on the back when all these issues are behind us and they're

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enjoying their super crisp looking display but it is something that they're

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going to have to deal with for now speaking of dealing with for now

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shopping at the local grocery store for

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your razors something that you shouldn't

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have to do fighting with someone to undo the lock and key and bring it out for

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you and then you go to the counter and pay for it why do you have to deal with all that crap Dollar Shave Club is the

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much faster much easier and less expensive way to shop for razors monthly

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basically all you do is sign up for the club and they will ship you your razors

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once a month for just a few bucks they

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also have other high quality bathroom supplies including their one wipe

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Charlie which are peppermint scented butt wipes for men always makes me a

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little uncomfortable talking about those razors is easy though you know razor

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everyone uses actually razors are kind of gross too because you got all this

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like other people's used hair on them which is why you shouldn't share razors

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which is why everyone should have their own subscription to Dollar Shave Club

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you can also get their Dr Carver shave butter which goes on clear so you can

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see what you're doing and I think that's pretty much all I have to say about that

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thanks Dollar Shave Club for supporting lonus Tech tips and for that matter

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small content producers like us everywhere it's great to see companies

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that care about supporting smaller guys as opposed to blowing all their money on

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developing razors with you know vibrating handles yes thank you Dollar

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Shave Club because Without You small

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content creators like me wouldn't have all these piles of SD cards to use

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whenever you know they need to record things and they're camera people don't

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bother to put any of them into the actual camera so we run out in the

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middle anyway the point is Dollar Shave

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Club go to dollarshaveclub.com lus to start shaving time and shaving money and

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00:11:04,160 --> 00:11:10,360
to Support lonus Tech tips so we can have more SD cards that

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we don't use guys thanks for watching like this video if you liked it dislike

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it if you disliked it leave a comment letting me know if your feelings are more complicated than this or this check

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out the link in the video description to support us there's of course the dollar shape Club link there's also a link to

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where you can buy a cool t-shirt like this one give us a monthly contribution or change your Amazon bookmark to one

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with our affiliate code so we get a small Kickback whenever you buy piles of

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SD cards that you don't use new